Spider Brains: A Love Story (Book One) (5 page)

I mean to tell ya.

What was ultra cool though was Delilah. She saw the whole thing. She didn't try to eat me, which was good or else I wouldn't be able to tell this story. Snicker.

She did, however, nudge me with her nose and then tried to bat me with her paw. But, I screamed as loud as I could which sounded like:

Hey! No. Delilah. No. It's me, Susi. (I felt I had to drop the E at that point.) :)

Cats, as with dogs, have tremendously sensitive hearing so she cocked her head as if I'd asked her for a treat or something and then laid down on her tummy.

When I moved the first time her head popped up but then I just said,

Delilah. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Movement felt artless. [Look it up! Artless also means "simple."] I mean, I would think going from a two-legged gangly humanoid to an eight-legged skitter bug I'd be tripping all over the place.

But, no. Movement was natural and, if you want to know the truth, it felt like this is how all movement should be, for everyone. In fact, going back to life as a kid felt more awkward than becoming a spider. Lucky for me the transitions occurred at night, landing me back in bed, or else I would've most definitely fall flat on my big butt! Snort.

K. So, where was I?

I walked deliberately, carefully, making sure Delilah wouldn't glug me up on her scratchy tongue. When she didn't, I maneuvered my way onto her furry paw. Now,
that
felt bizarro. Like walking through a field of stiff grass. But, after getting my cat fur legs, I surfed up on top of each hair and sailed across her forearm, up onto her shoulder and to the top of her head.

Delilah smelled like she always did, sweet like Downy softener from lying in the clothes basket but also leathery like the skin of a housecat.

Oh, yes. And, that first night? My very first moment of becoming a spider? Only one word comes to mind--brilliant. Like a ray from a prism straight into your pupils. Zappo dappo. Like the snap and flash of a sparkler. Azin'. Waaaayyyyyyyy.

No sound. Deafness everywhere. It felt as though all the electricity in the house went out all at once and all traffic ceased to exist, no planes, no trains. Nothing. Voidness. For a mere second.

Then?

Everything became one-thousand times louder. Except for my voice to the outside world. I sounded like the fly in The Fly, who yelled...
Help me!
As he shrunk out of sight.

Every noise I heard sounded as if the world had been put onto an amplifier and the speakers were sending off some freakin' horrid feedback. But, then, everything normalized at a level that didn't send my cochlea bursting into shards of sea shells! Holy.

On top of Delilah's head felt like sitting in the captain's chair of a really furry and sweet natured kitty ship. The Good Ship Kitty Cat!

The barbs of my claws gave me extra holding power. I steered her like an equestrian riding a horse.

It must've sounded like whispering to Delilah as I gave her orders. But, she responded to me as a spider better than she did with me as a human. The snot. :) Not really. She's my puddin' kitten'. I love Delilah. And, she loves me. She proved her love to me at the most important time in my life.

When we passed through her kitty door, I nearly got scraped off and rolled end over end to the tip of her shaggy tail but miraculously, I held tight. I yanked with my left set of claws and she jumped into action--down the street around the block toward Morlson's apartment.

SIX - Music Soothes the Savage Beast

Okay. Remember, now, my grades.

They had been getting much better since mom got me my stupid glasses, from which I’ll probably suffer irreparable psychological damage.

The subject I showed most improvement in was reading, of course, like, duh, who knew, but I also improved in classes I hadn’t been so savvy in like math and history and civics and science and band (I play the alto saxophone), and, well, all of the classes really.

Here's a side note about the saxophone:

Te he. But, really. I love my sax. Whenever stress levels reach the FREAKIN' ROOF! I pull out my faithful horn and bloooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwww! It's, like, the music soothes the savage beast thing.

M
y grades in the ot
her classes soared from low C’s in most, a D in science which was slipping further into the dregs of “you’ll never amount to anything in life!” To A's in most classes
all, except, science
--the biggest road block I had for getting a quality education in any post high school studies.

However. After my fall? My grades did not only improve they totally escalated like rocket boosters. Like my brain had gotten strung up to some space shuttle or something and went zipping across the phosphorescent galaxy of my intellect.

And, yet, my science teacher, a one, Ms. Morlson—the gnarliest of gnarly teachers—who needs to be excused to a convalescent center, please, seemed apprehensive about my new found mental abilities but my girlfriends thought the new, improved, smarter me was way cool.

So, Ms. Morlson asked me how I had been studying and, like, I mean, I told her, “The usual.”

She pulled back her chin like she wanted to make her whole head, neck and shoulders go into one weird looking Weeble, ‘cause when she did it her chin got lost in all of that skin she has.

She said. And I quote. “How is that possible?”

“
How is what possible, Ms. (I always call women Ms. not Misses or Miss. I’m sort of a feminist that way) Morlson?” Not knowing what she meant and all.

“
How is it that your grades should improve this much?”

“
I’m, uh, learning?” I flicked my head ever so subtly. Still. I think she caught it. Because with my slight inflection leaning toward, oh, maybe, a bit of sarcasm, it nearly appeared that she growled and squinted all at the same time. Her chin
un
-sucked and now she was pointing the bottom of it at me with a bunch of what I would define as "enthusiasm." Then her thin graying lips moved in, like, slow-mo and flipped upside-down much like my head onto the floor that night when I got bit, and she snarled out this next statement, again, quoting, “No one, I mean no one, Miss,” (I hate that she referred to me as miss!), “Speider can improve this greatly without some sort of, of,
assistance
!" The words hissed from her mouth.

Which I took to mean, and she meant for me to take to mean,
cheating
!

Okay. Here’s the deal. I am many things, as a teenager, one might suspect but I am no way, ever never will ever be or would ever even consider myself to be a cheater. EVER!

You can imagine my insult.

I told Ricki and Jamie and they freaked and called Ms. Morlson a toad and a reject from cool people past. You know, normal kid stuff but then they also told me that the day I missed school, from falling on my noggin, all the kids had been given an assignment, assigned by the toadmeister herself, a one, Morlson, and that we all had to write a 2000 word essay on something scientific and then we each would have to read our essay and develop our idea, for real, as a presentation in front of the class. So, like, if we wanted to write an essay on incubating eggs we would then have to incubate an egg for the class. See?

I had no clue what I might write about. Not until way after Ricki and Jamie left. Way after dinner that night and way after I went to bed. I mean, I have never in my entire existence have ever written a 2000 word essay and it sort of freaked me out but then to have to put my thoughts into action? Scientifically? Well, it scared the bejeezus (another mom word) out of me. Plus, the whole deal with Ms. Morlson, well, my lid popped about her! She really got my fangs throbbing and I just wanted to take action against her, not like going all Columbine on her or anything like that. But, you know, something about her and her comment and then this stupid assignment all swirled into some weird vortex of anger for me and I sort of went off.

But, then, I just fell asleep and forgot all about it.

And, for the next several evenings, after I went to sleep I dealt with the problem. I spun together a very cool scheme of how to make Ms. Morlson pay for her saying, in her oh so
not
very subtle way, that I was cheating.

I didn’t know how but I was going to make it happen. No matter what.

I told mom about her calling me a liar and mom did this funny little thing with her finger which she always does when she gets mad at me or hears some Republican lying about health care. She always says Republicans are big fat liars but I really don’t see much difference in any politicians. They all seem to be lying, to me.

So, mom does this thing by rubbing her first finger on her right hand underneath her nose, kind of hard like and then she purses her lips together but still tries to talk making her words sound as if they’re being sieved through a potato ricer or something. It’s funny but scary all at the same time.

She says, “Why that...” but then stops before saying what “that” is and looks at me like she can’t say what she wants to in front of me for fear it will set my precious little virgin (yes, I’m all that!) ears ablaze!

Then, she goes on, “Why that... [pause] [pause]... that...
woman
” (mom says woman like a dirty word), she says, “needs a talking to.”

That’s
all
!? I almost spit my chocolate milk out through my nose.

“
A talking to?” I asked.

“
Go get ready for school.” She, like, nearly bit my head off.

I just turned and huffed out a breath of air to make her see how ridiculous I thought she was. Like, oh, a talking to, that’ll really be like the worst possible sentence for a teacher. I mean. God. That’s all they do is talk.

Well, it’s kind of hard for me to get uber-mad at mom because she’s mom but also she smells so good all of the time, like her skin smells sort of like vanilla but also like roses and then to top it off, she wears this pretty cologne called Precious by Estee Lauder. So, I turned and stomped off making a grunt in the process for effect.

K. If you wish to put my reaction to her all together, it went something like this: huff out air, turn grunt and stomp off. Then, of course, I slammed the bathroom door and banged around in there for a while.